Patriot – 28 Days of Black Super Heroes – Day 5

Patriot from Young Avengers
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Previous (Day 4) Super Hero – War Machine!

Day 5 of 28 Days of Black Super Heroes, this time we’re talking about the Marvel Comics’ character Patriot. This will be a quick one, since I really don’t know too much about this guy. I don’t care to read about his adventures since his team, the Young Avengers, isn’t very interesting to me.

WHO IS HE?

Patriot is Elijah Bradley, a teenage boy who seemingly is no one, except he happened to be the nephew of Josiah X, who happened to be the son of Isaiah Bradley -the man known as the Black Captain America.

You probably all know that Captain America is the product of an experimental drug called the Super Soldier Serum. Well, this drug was not perfected overnight, and with ethical and racial standards as they were back in the WWII era, the Black soldiers of the time were forced to participate in the trial runs of the drug. Only Isaiah survived these experiments.

Josiah was not born naturally, but his birth was engineered using Isaiah’s DNA. He also contained the early Super Soldier Serum variant in his blood (apparently Josiah had some adventures with yesterday’s hero James “Rhodey” Rhodes in The Crew).

Elijah actually had no powers, but decided to carry on in the family tradition even without them. He used a common drug in the Marvel Universe called MGH (Mutant Growth Hormone) to temporarily give himself powers.

THE YOUNG AVENGERS

I didn’t know too much about any of this at first. I only picked up the Young Avengers trade at the time because I was bored and looking for something new. I was really enjoying the tales of young wannabe X-Men in the New X-Men: Academy X series, so I thought Young Avengers might be a nice complement.

It was a good idea, but there was only one problem:

Young Avengers was WACK.

I found it to be pretty trite and boring. When I was finished with it I think I threw it under my bed or somewhere. I only found it again when I was moving.

As you can imagine, since I didn’t like the book, I didn’t have too much to do with the character. I only saw him when he popped up from time to time in crossovers like Civil War.

After I saw him here I did some checking and it turns out Patriot got himself shot up protecting Captain America, and he got a blood transfusion from his grandfather, at which point he gained the abilities of the Super Soldier Serum. Not too bad.

Not enough for me to pick up Young Avengers, though.

WHAT WOULD IT TAKE? (THE WRAP UP)

Further Reading: Young Avengers Vol 1-2

Young Avengers isn’t one of my favorites, but for those of you interested in reading more on Patriot check these out:

I’m just not sure what it would take to get me to pick up Young Avengers and keep up with Patriot. I used to read Runaways, Teen Titans, and of course the aforementioned New X-Men: Academy X, but I think I outgrew the teen angst type stuff (although I must admit I do like the current Young Justice cartoon).

After awhile you get sick of these young punk heroes trying to make a name for themselves and whining and crying all the time. I guess that’s what teenagers do a lot of the time, but I’m not gonna pay to read that.

Every time the Young Avengers showed up one of them is crying about something.

Are there any Young Avengers fans out there? Do you like it? If so, what do you like about it?

So anyway, even with that said. I kind of have to hand it to Marvel for going in that deep on the whole Captain America thing, because what happened was truly messed up, and unfortunately given the real life scientific and ethical lapses of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, it just doesn’t seem that far fetched.

So now that we’re all depressed, I guess I’ll wrap up this Patriot article, and as usual here’s a look at the raw pencil art I drew. See you guys tomorrow!

Patriot from the Young Avengers pencil drawing by John Garrett

Next (Day 6) Super Hero – Green Lantern John Stewart!

Make sure to check out the comics page for more comics stuff here on Hypertransitory.com!

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